d3ft.com

Following the recommendations of practically the entire Internet, I invested in a copy of Shaun Inman’s Fever (and the domain to host the application). Using it for a few days shows that when I finally learn all its secrets, I will have my own internet tracking service.

That’s important because I’m increasingly running out of time. As I grow older, more people demand more of my time. Just consider that my 30–something attitude is taking shape. Anything that can alleviate one time constraint is a bonus for both time and mental health.

I discovered this today in the preferences. As of the 1.09 update (which you can read about on the spartan update log), you can share your favorite blog posts. This is something akin to Google Reader’s ability to share items.

While I don’t think this will catch on like sharing in Google Reader has, it will be interesting to see if people are willing to set up and share their feeds. I don’t save items, so it isn’t a feature for me I would use. But it’s there and gives owners of Fever something else to brag about.

Also of note are the services that you can add or remove. You could use the syntax of any service that allows you to add content through a link, as demonstrated by the default set. Using one of the zillions of URL shorteners with metrics would be an obvious choice (i.e. Bit.ly).

Inman is already internet famous for his Mint website statistics package. Since I see internalized as being a corporate dead end, I chose not to go that direction on this site. But with the popularity of Mint, and how well Fever caters to the class of people who consume lots of RSS, I’m wondering how many sites are going to start using LAMPMF configurations.¹

ADDED: I should point out the preference for an RSS feed will share your last 30 saved items using this syntax:

http://example.com/fever/?rss=saved

This is the feed that I think more people will begin sharing. It’s also the thing I think I will find most interesting.

1. Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Mint, Fever. ↩